@ rcb25 - "I simply just played around with lots of blinn and lambert materials and settings to see what results I got."

yeah thats what i usual do

@ severinianthony - "Have you tried laying out the UV's for a simple, six-sided cube? It may be incredibly boring and basic, but it gives you the general idea behind UV layout"

yes i have tried to do something like that from one of my old maya 5 books which was just to lay out numbers on each side of a 6-sided box but no success, i struggle and that bad :S please help ... lol

marlon